From Where I Sit...

Movie Gender Bender



This will be my first movie review. (Please hold your applause.)
I am in awe of movie reviewers like Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper. There are many others as well, but ever since Ebert & Siskel went on the air they really set the table on how to do a review show. Then when Gene Siskel died Richard Roeper stepped in to continue the tradition of thumbing up or down.

It's a great gig. Watch a movie, tell people what you think, get paid. I'm more than happy to tell people what I think. I kinda thought my brother and I could do a movie review show. We are different enough to look at the same thing and give you two different opinions. My opinion would always be right however. Then we could yell at each other's opinion and end the show with something being knocked over. It would be like Siskel & Ebert & Springer all in one.

But, I digress.

The movie I want to review is Bee Movie. I really enjoyed it. My wife enjoyed it. My son almost choked on a Toostie roll and got his foot stuck in the movie seat. He said he liked it, so I'll trust his opinion.

I'm a big fan of Jerry Seinfeld so I went in with a high level of expectations. It was hard not to expect a Seinfeld show type comedy. I think Jerry doing an animated movie was a good idea to help adults drown out the Jerry we watched on TV.

The story was good and funny, but with one major glaring fault that will have children asking their parents about and students grilling their science teachers. The boy bees in the movie had stingers. This is a major flaw because in the bee world male bees do not have stingers and thus are unable to sting. This is important because that is what I told my son and what my wife teaches her students. Yet, there were the boy bees with stingers. There is even a whole storyline based on a boy bee stinging someone. How could they make such an error?

This also happened in another movie, Barnyard. In this movie the cows are guys.
WHAT THE HELL?
I'll give Jerry Seinfeld the benefit of the doubt as not being a bee expert. But, I think everybody knows cows are girls. In that movie, this gender fau paux was so glaring I could not enjoy the movie, I did not enjoy the movie, my beliefs in a higher power were shaken.

I understand comedy. You can do a lot of bending of rules for comedy, but making a cow a boy just doesn't work.

Bottom line. The Bee Movie was very good. Be prepared to answer questions about the boys having stingers. It might transition into a birds and the bees conversation. So be prepared, this movie could be life changing.